Shelf Awareness for Friday, January 5, 2018

Quotation of the Day

'I'm Greedy. I Want to Read Everything' in a Great Bookstore

"That's the feeling I get when I walk into a great bookstore. I'm greedy. I want to read everything in it.... What we can do that Amazon can't do is to be a community space and a resource.... We can be a place where people can come in and get a recommendation for a book that wasn't generated by an algorithm. We can be a place where people can be surprised by a book or an author they didn't know. Independent bookstores are good for people and the community and the country and for how we talk about ideas. I'd like to be a small part of helping that to continue."

'I'm Greedy. I Want to Read Everything' in a Great Bookstore

News

After Trump Threats, Holt Releases Fire and Fury Today

The fire and fury about Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (Holt) has grown so much in the two days after the Guardian's initial unauthorized excerpts that the publisher has moved the book's publication date from next Tuesday to today. This comes after a lawyer for President Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to Wolff and Holt, demanding that they halt publication of the book, claiming it contains libelous and defamatory material. The lawyer also demanded a retraction and apology.

In a response, Holt confirmed it had received such a letter and said, "We see Fire and Fury as an extraordinary contribution to our national discourse, and are proceeding with the publication of the book."

Demand has been so strong that the book is already out of stock at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

The book is based on some 200 interviews with people in and close to the Trump Administration. Among the most incendiary comments were former White House adviser Steve Bannon's characterization of a 2016 Trump Tower meeting that included Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and several Russians as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic." In response, Trump tweeted that Bannon had "not only lost his job, he lost his mind." Bannon also called Trump daughter Ivanka Trump "dumb as a brick."

Other striking excerpts include that First Lady Melania Trump cried on election night because she didn't want to live in the White House; that many Trump administration staffers consider Trump an "idiot"; and that Trump is a disengaged, bored leader who doesn't read and is uninterested in policy details.

The White House and allies have bitterly attacked the book and author for its accuracy since apparently no one at the White House understands that legal and other threats in such situations are an extraordinarily effective form of publicity for the book at issue.

Moreover, it's been reported that Wolff has audio recordings of many if not all of his interviews, including those of Bannon. Wolff told the New York Times that he is "wholly comfortable with my numerous sources."

Wolff has been a regular columnist for Vanity Fair, New York, the Hollywood Reporter, British GQ, USA Today and the Guardian. His previous six books include Burn Rate and The Man Who Owns the News.

In a statement, American Booksellers Association CEO Oren Teicher said: "For a sitting president to threaten legal action in an attempt to stop publication of a book is an appalling abuse of executive power. We believe this sort of attempted prior restraint sets a dangerous precedent, and, if successful, would represent a chilling effect on free speech. Not only would it would deter authors and publishers from publishing future books about this president (and any future sitting president), it would also directly undercut our nation's cultural and political legacy of a vigorous exchange and debate of ideas, the hallmark of a healthy democracy.

"ABA staunchly defends the freedom of publishers to publish and sell the titles they deem appropriate, whether it is a book from a controversial author, or whether it is about a sitting president. The First Amendment exists to protect readers from exactly this kind of over-reach."

In addition, National Coalition Against Censorship executive director Christopher Finan said: "The American people have a First Amendment right to read Fire and Fury and other works that contribute to an important public debate, even when they contain statements critical of the president. It is up to the courts to determine if the statements are libelous after they are published. The letter is clearly intended to intimidate Wolff and Henry Holt into withholding information that is embarrassing to the president and his family."

After Trump Threats, Holt Releases Fire and Fury Today

B&N Holiday Sales Drop 6.4%

Another unhappy holiday report from Barnes & Noble: the company said that sales during the nine-week holiday period ending December 30 fell 6.4%, to $953 million, and sales at stores open at least a year also fell 6.4%. Online sales dropped 4.5%.

Book sales fell 4.5%, less than in other categories. Declines in gift, music and DVD categories "accounted for nearly half of the comparable store sales decrease."

Late last year, B&N had indicated that comp-store sales in the fall into November were encouraging, but said yesterday that "sales trends softened in December, primarily due to lower traffic."

B&N said it remains focused on "executing its strategic turnaround plan, which includes an aggressive expense management program."

B&N Holiday Sales Drop 6.4%

Frozen Pipe Damages Greenlight Bookstore PLG

Greenlight Bookstore's Prospect Lefferts Gardens location in Brooklyn, N.Y., suffered "significant damage" Wednesday night when a frozen pipe burst in the building and sent water pouring through the ceiling, which affected two-thirds of the store space as well as the basement offices. The ceiling, walls, shelves, fixtures "and a whole lot of books" were damaged.

"But we have a lot to be grateful for," Greenlight said in a message to customers. "We're grateful that our booksellers are rock stars--they rescued many books from the flood, preventing far worse damage. We're grateful to the good folks on the maintenance team at the Parkside who jumped into action to help, bringing in dehumidifiers and working overnight to get the building back in shape. We're grateful that we've got good business insurance which will figure everything out eventually. We're even grateful for the 'bomb cyclone,' which gave us a quiet day to figure everything out. And we're grateful that we're in a community that will understand if we look a little ragged for a while."

Yesterday, the Greenlight team cleaned up, with plans to reopen for business on Friday: "All of our scheduled events will take place as planned. We'll restock, repair, and rebuild."

The store opened in November 2016 in a new building. Its other store, in Fort Greene, opened in 2009.

Frozen Pipe Damages Greenlight Bookstore PLG

New Bookstore Cafe Opening in Kansas City

The future home of Our Daily Nada.

Attorneys Amy Covitz and Andrea Baca "are hoping to bring a little bit of Paris to Delaware Street" in Kansas City, Mo., next summer with the opening of Our Daily Nada, a bookstore, cafe and bar, CityScene KC reported. A June 15 opening is anticipated for the business, which will be located at 304 Delaware in the River Market. They signed a lease on the 2,600-square-foot space last month and will take occupancy in April. Our Daily Nada will feature new and used books; a wine bar, and local craft beers and craft cocktails; chef Carlos Mortera of The Bite in the River Market will prepare light fare.

Inspiration for the venture came from the legendary Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris, according to Covitz, while the name comes from a line in Ernest Hemingway's story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place."

"Bookstores are coming back and bookstore bars are coming back in a lot of cities," Covitz said. "It's going to be a very European cafe circa the 1920s, Hemingway inspired. Very art deco with lots of reading spaces... a peaceful place to come to read and have a drink in a calm atmosphere.... It will be a general interest bookstore with a robust food section, art, fiction. We haven't solidified all the sections yet."

Covitz, who became friends with Baca in 2010 while working at a downtown law firm, began to consider starting her own retail business after helping her husband, Jeff, open the men's clothing shop Houndstooth. "I loved the process and I had this bookstore idea for 10 years," she said. After reaching out to Nicole Sullivan, owner of Denver's BookBar, she traveled there to learn about its operation. Covitz said she is also is a fan of Rainy Day Books in Fairway and the Prospero's Books on 39th Street.

New Bookstore Cafe Opening in Kansas City

Tim Sullivan Joining University of California Press as Executive Director

Effective in February, Tim Sullivan is joining the University of California Press as executive director. He has been the editorial director of Harvard Business Review Press since 2011 and earlier had been executive editor. He also served as a senior editor for HBR magazine and as a member of the senior management team for the HBR Group. He has worked, the University of California Press said, "to transform the press, re-focusing its publishing program, expanding the reach of its authors' ideas, and improving its financial results."

Susan Carlson, Vice Provost for Academic Personal and Programs in the University of California's Office of the President, said, "Tim's ability to work with current and prospective authors to advance the global recognition of their works is especially anticipated and welcomed."

Sullivan said, "I couldn't be more excited to help lead as singular a publisher as the University of California Press. I deeply respect its history and mission, and look forward to creating its future with its exceptional staff."

Sullivan has also worked at Princeton University Press, Penguin and Basic Books and written two books, The Org: Understanding the Underlying Logic of Your Office (Twelve) and The Inner Lives of Markets: How People Shape Them--and How They Shape Us (Public Affairs).

Tim Sullivan Joining University of California Press as Executive Director

Obituary Note: Aharon Appelfeld

Acclaimed Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld, "who wrote disturbing, obliquely told stories of self-deluded Jews slowly awakening to the reality of the Holocaust," died January 4, the New York Times reported. He was 85. Appelfeld "told his stories from a seemingly naïve eye, a baffled child's eye, working by indirection and intimation.... people wrestled with the banalities of daily life as ominous events were apprehended like distant thunder, lending his narrative the absurdist quality of a Beckett play or the chill of a Kafka story."

He published books in Hebrew every couple of years, and at least 16 novels were translated into English from 1981 to 2011, the Times noted. Appelfeld's works include Badenheim 1939, which the critic Irving Howe called "a small masterpiece," The Age of Wonders, To the Land of the Cattails, The Immortal Bartfuss, For Every Sin, and The Skin and the Gown. Schocken will publish The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping January 31, and To the Edge of Sorrow in January 2019.

A major figure in the group of Israeli writers that included Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua and David Grossman, Appelfeld was described by Philip Roth as a "displaced writer of displaced fiction who has made of displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own." Critic Eva Hoffman wrote, "In his call to break the concealed silence, he has courageously begun to illuminate regions of the soul usually darkened by secrecy and sorrow."

Appelfeld's many honors include the 1983 Israel Prize for literature, the 1989 National Jewish Book Award for fiction and the Prix Médicis Étranger. His novel Blooms of Darkness was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2013. In 1997, he was appointed a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Obituary Note: Aharon Appelfeld

Notes

Cool Idea of the Day: No More Plastic Bags at Phoenix Books

Michael DeSanto, co-owner of Vermont's Phoenix Books, had a New Year's resolution: to make the business a plastic bag-free zone. Effective January 1, Phoenix Books, which has locations in Essex, Burlington, Rutland and Chester, has stopped using plastic bags at the check-out counter, and instead offers customers recycled/recyclable paper bags as well as reusable totes sold at or below cost.

"I cannot turn a blind eye to the catastrophic effect plastic in general and plastic bags in particular have on our environment," said DeSanto. "Despite the challenges of finding sturdy replacements to protect the purchases of our customers, I am determined to make plastic bags disappear from our stores. I strongly believe this is the right thing to do. We will be promoting the use of reusable bags from now on, but I also don't see a sensible way to avoid using paper bags, although I would like to do that someday. We can't be perfect, I know that, but we can try to do the best we can. By eliminating plastic bags from Phoenix Books, perhaps we can help reduce the demand for the petroleum that makes up 80% of a plastic bag."

Michele Morris, director of outreach & communications at the Chittenden Solid Waste District, said, "From our point of view, single-use plastic bags represent a waste of resources.... Anything sent to Vermont's last remaining landfill as 'trash' will stay buried there virtually forever. We applaud Phoenix Books for encouraging the use of durable, reusable bags whenever possible. Durable beats disposable all day long."

Media Heat: Michael Wolff on Meet the Press

TV: Are You Sleeping

Apple's video programming unit has put into development Are You Sleeping, a thriller drama series based on the true-crime novel by Kathleen Barber. Deadline reported that Oscar winner Octavia Spencer (The Help, Hidden Figures) will star in the project, from Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine. The series is created and written by Nichelle Tramble Spellman (The Good Wife, Justified). Chernin Entertainment & Endeavor Content is the studio.

TV: Are You Sleeping

Books & Authors

Reading with... Jillian Medoff

photo: Nina Subin

Jillian Medoff's fourth novel, This Could Hurt (Harper, January 9, 2018), is a razor-sharp examination of corporate culture. Two of Medoff's novels, I Couldn't Love You More and Hunger Point, were national bestsellers, and the latter was made into an original cable movie starring Barbara Hershey and Christina Hendricks. Along with writing novels, Medoff has a long career in management consulting, and has worked for Deloitte, Aon and other Fortune 500 companies.

On your nightstand now:

My reading system, which includes my nightstand stack, is ever-evolving and highly inefficient:

Work-commute: short stories, essays, newspaper articles, Buzzfeed lists, gossip. I just finished Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (shattering). Next up is We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby. Also, "Nine Celebrities with Plastic Surgery Disasters" (no judgments).

Living room couch and third-floor green chair: long, multi-layered novels and nonfiction that reads like novels. In my stack: Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan and No One Cares About Crazy People by Ron Powers.

Plane travel books on my e-reader: this is where I store classics like A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (I never read it, judge if you must). However, I always forget to pack the device, and end up buying at least two books in the terminal, God forbid I'm stuck on a flight with only the SkyMall catalogue (which I also read, cover to cover). The last time this happened, I bought Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner, The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris and My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent.

Nightstand books: are the same as living room couch and third-floor green chair books, although this is where I stack unread loot: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton and People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder.

Note: This past week, I was so engrossed in Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, I abandoned my system and read it everywhere--train, living room couch, third-floor green chair, in bed, at the kitchen counter. Had I traveled, I would've toted it with me and read it on the plane (after SkyMall, natch).

Favorite book when you were a child:

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. I was a lonely bookworm and a perpetual outsider with weird ideas, but reading the onion scene changed my entire perspective. Suddenly it was okay to be absurd.

Your top five authors:

Top five authors right now (10/17/2017, 12:37 p.m.): Toni Morrison, Joshua Ferris, Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, Emily St. John Mandel

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. I took a class on Melville as a college sophomore and couldn't get through it; tried again as a senior, but no dice. Now, when I visit my novels in bookstores and libraries, and see Melville near Medoff on the shelf, I'm reminded of my secret shame.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc. When I was reading this book, I wanted to roll around in the pages; I wanted to eat the words. Trust me: once you read this book, you'll never be the same.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett. I would've bought it anyway but the cover assured me it was a smart move.

Book you hid from your parents:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Do you guys remember the book Coffee, Tea or Me? The one about the stewardesses (sorry, flight attendants)? You kept looking for it? Well, you never asked me (why would you? I was only, like, 11). Funny story: I took it with me to Camp Galaxy, Josh Gillen grabbed it, and I never saw it again. I always meant to tell you, but the timing never felt right, so here we are. So, sorry and owe you $7.95.

Love, Jill

PS: That book. Wow.

Book that changed your life:

Anywhere but Here by Mona Simpson. This book stunned me; as a young novelist, it was one of the first times I saw my own preoccupations on the page in a language that I spoke fluently. I was living in Atlanta at the time, and had no connection whatsoever to Mona--or, for that matter, to a writing community--but I was determined to meet her. So, I found out where she taught, and applied to that one MFA program (only one!). Two years later, she was my thesis adviser, working with me on what eventually became Hunger Point, my first novel.

Favorite line from a book:

This is like pulling salt from the sea. Even so, I'll say, "Maybe she could invite the chairs," from Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny. You have to read the whole book to get the context, but the payoff is worth it.

Five books you'll never part with:

Anywhere but Here (see above)Then We Came to the End by Joshua FerrisA Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer EganAmerican Pastoral by Philip RothMay We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Reading this novel was the first time I was moved by great art as a young adult. I'd love to be able to re-experience that first cataclysmic jolt; honestly, that book killed me.

Why you couldn't answer the questions correctly:

Other books I've obsessed over include Patrimony by Philip Roth; war novels, particularly big books by male writers, Going After Cacciato and The Things They Carried; All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews; In the Woods by Tana French; The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen; Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Honestly, reading is as vital to me as breathing; I just love books.

Book Review

Review: Eternal Life

An April 2017 New Yorker article described the efforts of Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, along with others in Silicon Valley, to solve the problem of aging and perhaps even conquer death. Those ambitious technology titans might want to pause from their researches for a few hours to ponder Dara Horn's fifth novel. Eternal Life is a beautiful but melancholy exploration of mortality as the element of human existence that's essential to life's meaning.

Rachel, an 18-year-old woman living in the first century of the Common Era, is mother to Yochanan ben Zakkai, who will one day become an eminent Talmudic scholar. When her infant son becomes desperately ill, she strikes a terrible bargain with Elazar, the son of the Temple high priest and her lover, agreeing to endure eternal life in exchange for her son's recovery. Over the next 2,000 years, Rachel experiences repeated cycles of death and rebirth, giving birth to dozens of children in the process, only to watch them all age and die before her eyes.

In the portion of the novel set in the present, Rachel spars with her granddaughter Hannah, a genetics researcher and someone who Rachel calls one of the "new high priests," over the young woman's project to unlock the secrets of, and attempt to defeat, the aging process. Acutely conscious of the passage of time, Hannah bemoans the "secret passage underneath everything that's always flowing with this constant stream of sorrow, and no one can see it, but we all know it's there," as she watches her young children move through life's stages. But far worse, based on Rachel's bitter experience, is the pain of an unending existence.

For a short novel, Eternal Life swiftly traverses an impressive swath of history. Horn (In the Image) vividly renders the destruction of the Second Temple, in Jerusalem, in 70 C.E., as believably as she creates a character--Rachel's son Rocky--who's working on a new application of blockchain technology (a "hack-proof way of creating a permanent digital record") to aid his digital currency mining operation.

Horn holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard, where she's taught Yiddish and Hebrew literature, and has won two National Jewish Book Awards. She is well versed in Jewish religion and culture, and brings that knowledge to bear on her story unobtrusively and effectively, making this a novel that will appeal to both Jewish and non-Jewish readers.

A well-known Yiddish blessing expresses the hope that its recipient will "live until 120." Dara Horn's provocative novel is a persuasive brief for why no wise person should wish for a longer span of years than that. --Harvey Freedenberg, attorney and freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Dara Horn's melancholy novel about the burden of an endless life may give pause to people who wish they might live forever.

Deeper Understanding

Robert Gray: Indie Booksellers Surviving Retail Bombogenesis

With an apocalyptically named winter weather event (Bomb Cyclone, bombogenesis) still punishing the Northeast, it seems appropriate to consider the word "survival" as it applies to the world of indie bookselling.

In recent months, a blizzard (sorry) of media reports disclosed, with barely masked shock, the apparently surprising ability of indie booksellers to "survive, even thrive" (as the headlines love to proclaim) more than two decades of incessant retail assault by the likes of Amazon and chain bookstores. As 2017 came to an end, the trend intensified, so I collected a few links for further consideration and to give me hope as we begin the new year. For example:

"The theoretical and managerial lessons we can learn from independent bookstores have implications for a wide array of traditional brick-and-mortar businesses facing technological change. But this has been an especially fascinating industry to study because indie booksellers provide us with a story of hope," said Ryan Raffaelli in a Quartz piece headlined "How independent bookstores thrived in spite of Amazon." Raffaelli studies how mature organizations and industries faced with technological change reinvent themselves.

Volumes Bookcafe co-owner Rebecca George wrote in the Chicago Review of Books: "Bookstores are thriving, despite this idea that saving $2 or $3 by absolutely all means necessary has become the cultural norm. Want a bookstore in your neighborhood? Well, those few extra bucks are the price to keep them there.... [N]ew bookstores are opening every month nationwide. Several bookstores are opening new locations in their surrounding communities. Their survival, however, rests in the young recognizing that bookstores are also in the 21st century. They're right there with you--constantly moving and changing to adapt and provide better community spaces for you--wherever you are."

Scottish bookseller Kevin Ramage, owner of the Highland Bookshop in Fort William, told the Guardian: "People ask me what's the daftest thing you've done? Open a bookshop in Fort William. It's the remotest town on the mainland--over an hour from Inverness.... We've never thought that we made a mistake. Indies have been struggling, but I think the situation is turning, both in terms of the attitude to the printed word--Kindles have their time and place but generally people are realizing that they're not as satisfying as a printed book--and also a large layer of people are becoming more conscious of the role of the high street in their lives and their town. Social attitudes are changing."

Noting that "in the age of smartphones and screens, it may seem unlikely that independent bookstores would stand a chance," the East Valley Tribune countered that theory by speaking with Cindy Dach, co-owner and general manager of Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe and Phoenix, Ariz. She said taking a chance is what allows and indies to stand a chance: "You have to be innovative. And every day, we always have to ask the question if we're being innovative enough.... It always feels like we're skating on thin ice. It always does, and that feeling won't probably ever go away. But where success has been is being relevant to our communities, being in touch to our communities, listening."

In a Forbes magazine crystal ball piece on the "Top Shopping Trends Of 2018," Pamela Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, predicted: "Shoppers will return to Main Street in 2018. This trend is fueled by the desire of the highest-potential and highest-spending customers' passion for a new shopping experience that they can't find online, at the mall, in the national chains or in big box stores. Owners of small retail shops often feel overwhelmed by the rapidly changing retail environment, with competition on all sides and most especially from Amazon. But small business retailers have a competitive advantage that none of these bigger, better capitalized and techno-powered retailers have: their personal touch. It is realized not just through the personal service that specialty retailers offer, but by being vital members of the local community. This trend will reshape the retail landscape over the next decade."

What is the magic formula that has allowed and indie bookstores to "survive, even thrive" in these confusing times? Cindy Dach had a great answer for that one: "You open the doors and get everybody in their stations, and you start working and you shelve the books, which seems like what you would do every day, which is 100% of your energy. Then you have to find another 100% to say, 'How do I stay relevant?' and 'How do I stay innovative?' and 'How do I get people to want to be here?' And we try to answer those questions every single day."